Workflow questions

[Michael Salzlechner]

Hi there

i am trying to come up with a good workflow for video. We have done the same thing with still photography and have come up with a well worked out workflow that cuts the time nessecary down to a minimum and covers all the nessecary steps very well.

For video though i am still trying to figure this out

Essentially we have a few steps

Taking the video (obviously, you cant leave out this step to get the perfect zero time workflow ;-))

Getting video on to the computer. This obviously varies depending on how the video is taken in the first place. If on tape video will have to be captured if on disk simple copying is good enough

Organizing the video clips. We use custom software to organize our still photography and audio files from that and that software should be able to cover videos as well as it is built to simply organize any file of any file type.

Post processing

Creation of final DVD or whatever is nessecary

Now the problems i am running into is trying to figure out the archiving of clips. With still photography this was easy. Simply archive the RAW files that come from the camera and also archve any post processed images on CD or DVD.

With video the problem is the huge amount of data.

Maybe i simply used the wrong format to capture the video. What do you use to capture the video in what format

what do you archive ?

Any other ideas about the workflow with video are welcome as well.

[Glenn Chan]

In most editing programs, you can re-create your project if you have the project file and the original tapes.

You need:
Original tapes with no timecode breaks on them. If there are timecode breaks, you might want to dub the tape with continuous timecode.

The project file

Media not on your video tapes: Music, SFX, stills, etc.

You might also want to print a copy of your master onto mini-DV too, so you have 2 copies of your media. mini-DV tape lasts approximately 10-15 years stored properly... after that the magnetic stuff on it will start to shed or something. If you have two copies, you can deal with occaisional dropouts.

Some DVDs only last a few years, so you need to watch out for that if archiving on that format.

2- Is this a one-time project, or something you'll repeat over and over?
Is speed important? (i.e. like those photos for people who just got off a rollercoaster at a amusement park)

[Michael Salzlechner]

Glenn

thanks for your reply

i was hoping not to have to go back to tapes if nessecary. With still photography it is easy because i can keep years worth of photos available and even backed up to CD or DVD this is not an issue

With video though we are looking at lots more disk space. If we do an event we are talking about 40 - 80 GB of disk space for each day

As far as DVD and CD archiving the longevity is not an issue as it is easy to create dupes every few years. Actually we had been archiving to CD for years and when we started using DVD's we simply rearchived the old CD's to new DVD's. We just keep doing that whenever new media types with more capacity come out which will keep them in good condition. Also good CD's and DVD's last quite a bit longer then what people think.

This is not a one time project but rather something we will be doing a lot which is why i want to design a good workflow. Timing is not so critical right now because for now we will not be doing any editing or cutting onsite.

Mike

[Glenn Chan]

Well your options for archiving video are:
A- Original tapes.
Price: About 25 cents / GB. (mini-DV tapes cost about $2.60USD each in the states from ebay/seller: getthebestdeals) *If you do not re-use tape, then this doesn't actually "cost" anything.
Time to archive: Low
Retrieval time: Low (if just capturing the master) to moderate (if re-creating the project)
Archival Life: 10-15 years
Will equipment be around in 15 years: Yes*, but you will need a working copy of the software! Very often the newer versions of editing programs are not backwards compatible.

B- DVDs
Price: About 10 cents / GB. (Assuming 50 cents for Taiyo Yuden DVDs which give the lowest error rates.)
If re-copying the DVDs, then price will increase.
Time to archive: High.
Retrieval time: Moderate.
Archival life: ??? DVD life can be significantly shortened by water, the marker you use, sunlight, scratches. Temperature and humidity likely make a difference. Media formulation may also make a difference.
Will equipment be around in the future to read DVDs: Yes. Still need working software.
Notes: When you burn video onto the DVD, you will have to span the project across multiple DVDs.

C- Hard drives
Price: Quickly dropping. About 50 cents / GB. Plus cost of enclosure.
Time to archive: Low.
Retrieval time: low.
Archival life: Should be long as long as hard drive is not in use. A small percentage of hard drives fail within first week of use?
*Hard drive recovery available for several hundred dollars. (Should rescue you in case of most hard drive failures.)
Will equipment in the future read the hard drive: Probably. The IDE/ATA interface should still be kicking as you can get IDE--> SATA adapters. The SATA interface should stick around for some time (like 15 years).
Notes: Most expensive and convenient. If your time is important, this could be your cheapest option.

Enclosure: You can get hard drives and throw them into an enclosure. There a few vendors that may swappable drive bays. If you feel lucky, you can run hard drives without an enclosure... get a SATA hard drive, and loop a SATA cable and power connector into a convenient location where you can swap the drive conveniently. You will need to watch for ESD/static... probably keep the drive inside an ESD bag. Cooling may be a minor concern.

D- Tape (computer)
There are various forms of backup available onto magnetic tape. I'm not too familiar with this, but it would seem backing up onto mini-DV would be similar.

[Sean McHenry]

Also, on the hard drives as storage, the IDE or EIDE / SATA format is not really the issue as if you load the drives into an external USB 2.0 or 1394 (firewire) external drive bay, your PC or Mac needs to only worry about speaking USB or firewire years from now. By then there will probably be something faster, like widespread implementation of firewire 800 or something but at least that's backward compatible.

So, you really don't have to worry about the format the individual drives are in. Now if you have a RAID array you need to archive, that might ba another issue.